Document Management is defined as the “creation, storage, organization, transmission, retrieval, manipulation, update, and eventual disposition of documents to fulfill an organizational purpose”. When organizations do not have any kind of formal document management system in place, content is often created and saved in a decentralized way on scattered file shares and individual hard drives. This makes it hard for employees to find, share, and collaborate effectively on essential content and makes very difficult for organizations to make effective use of the valuable business information and data they have. Some important documents might only exist in paper format or may have been scanned and digitized to make them electronically traceable, but not necessarily searchable.
As the overall volume of business information increases, document volumes continue to rise. Most documents today are no longer only paper-based or they may be paper-based for a short period, but predominantly, the document lifecycle resides in an electronic form.
Businesses today need solutions that manage documents throughout their lifecycle – from electronic creation, to paper output and back into electronic form – all in a controlled fashion.
At the very least, a Document Management System (DMS) must provide the following features:
- Integrated, efficient capture, stemming, indexing, and OCR of all paper and digital documents
- Security compliance for storage, sharing & retention of electronic documents
Online storage and back-up systems, such as DropBox©, Box©, Microsoft OneDrive©, Google Drive© and Apple iCloud© started as consumer applications that have been introduced into the workplace by employees. While cloud-based service applications have proliferated and expanded in functionality recently, and yet none of those solutions are considered a compliant document management system. Use of such systems by employee’s also fragments centralized document control and introduces a high level of risk to the organization.
Microsoft Windows File Explorer© file system, and popular electronic content management (ECM) systems like Microsoft SharePoint© are also limited in what they can offer. CaelumOne is a hybrid platform that encompasses the key elements of an ECM, with the audit trail structure of a Document Management System (DMS) that properly supports Electronic Records Management requirements as well. Given the need to not only support streaming video and indexing images as well as documentation the ECM core is key BUT you also need sound audit trail capabilities including document workflow for approvals and retention parameters. CaelumOne ECM Solution answers that call.
by Tim Magill